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Movie Guide
Director: Robert Duvall. With Duvall, Luciana Pedraza, Ruben Blades, Kathy Baker. (114 min.)
Sterritt *** See review.
Director: John McTiernan. With John Travolta, Connie Nielsen, Samuel L. Jackson, Giovanni Ribisi. (98 min.)
Sterritt * A retired military man (Travolta) investigates the murder of a brutal sergeant (Jackson) in a chaotic training situation where too many people had too many motives and opportunities for the crime. Travolta and Jackson have some effective scenes, but Nielsen is lacking in charisma, and James Vanderbilt's screenplay ought to be court-martialed.
Director: Jon Amiel. With Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Delroy Lindo, Stanley Tucci. (136 min.)
Staff * It's the end of the world as we know it when a military experiment ends up destabilizing Earth's core. Before long, subpar fire-and-brimstone special effects are raining on postcard scenery such as the Coliseum in Rome and the Golden Gate in San Francisco. In an attempt to restore gravity to the planet and add gravitas to the lightweight story, a distinguished cast is gathered to journey to Earth's center. The actors tackle their roles with laughable temerity, and the result, though hardly laudable, is still better than "Armaggedon." By Stephen Humphries
Director: Chris Rock. With Rock, Bernie Mac, Robin Givens. (95 min.)
Sterritt ** See review.
Director: Steve James. With Stephen Fielding, Steve James, Verna Hagler, Tonya Gregory. (140 min.)
Sterritt **** See review.
Director: Jia Zhang-ke. With Wei Wei Zhao, Hong Wei Wang, Ru Bai, Qiong Wu. (113 min.)
Sterritt ** The life and times of two teens in provincial China, where every pursuit from romantic longing to family life is tinged with a deeply felt, utterly ignorant envy of Western wealth and culture. This sequel to Jia's excellent 1997 drama "Xiao Wu" is less original and absorbing than its predecessor, and less visually impressive than "Platform," his 2000 look at Chinese sociopolitical change. It offers a lot of commentary about life in China, however. In Mandarin with English subtitles.
Director: Lee Hirsch. With Miriam Makeba, Abdullah Ibrahim, Hugh Masakela, Thandi Modise. (103 min.)
Sterritt ** A look at the role played by popular music in the war against apartheid during 40 years of South Africa's history. There are lots of lively tunes in an excellent cause, but in the end you wish you'd either probed more deeply into historical events or heard more uninterrupted minutes of inspired performing. In English, Xhosa, and Zulu, with English subtitles.
Staff *** Rousing, toe-tapping, interesting slice of history, could have offered more depth.
Sex/Nudity: None. Violence: 12 scenes of violent historical footage, including shootings. Profanity: 4 profanities. Drugs: 6 scenes of smoking, drinking.
Director: Harald Zwart. With Frankie Muniz, Hilary Duff, Angie Harmon. (110 min.)
Sterritt * An ordinary high-schooler becomes a junior James Bond when the CIA recruits him for an assignment only Hollywood could dream up: dating a pretty girl so he can spy on her dad, a scientist whose schemes could destroy the world. The name-brand cast doesn't muster much entertainment value because the repetitious script shows interest in nothing beyond action-centered plot gimmicks and romantic shenanigans.
Sex/Nudity: At least 2 scenes with innuendo. Violence: 12 scenes with violence, including explosions, fighting. Profanity: 10 expressions. Drugs: None noted.
Director: Gurinder Chadha. With Parminder K. Nagra, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Keira Knightley. (112 min.)
Sterritt ** The heroine is a soccer-loving Indian teen living in London with her highly traditional family; they believe nice young women shouldn't chase after balls in front of ogling crowds, and their conservatism may prevent her from fashioning her future on her own terms. The film isn't original or exciting, probing territory already explored in pictures like "East Is East," but its look at cultural clashes is always well-meaning and good-humored.
Violence: Mild violence on the soccer field. Profanity: 7 instances of profanity.
Director: Mort Nathan. With Cuba Gooding Jr., Vivica A. Fox, Horatio Sanz, Roselyn Sanchez. (93 min.)
Sterritt * Hoping for sexual adventures on a singles cruise, two woman-crazy guys find themselves on a ship full of gay men instead, plus a bevy of bikini models brought on board by a feeble plot twist. This boatload of clichés is strenuously unfunny. Switch your travel reservation to another theater!
Sex/Nudity: 23 sex scenes, including innuendo, seminudity. Violence: 6 scenes. Profanity: 56 expressions. Drugs: 13 scenes of drinking, smoking.
Director: Adam Shankman. With Steve Martin, Queen Latifah, Eugene Levy, Joan Plowright. (105 min.)
Sterritt * Likable white lawyer (Martin) meets earthy black exconvict (Latifah) who won't stop pestering him until he helps her clear her name. Parts of this boisterous comedy are in remarkably poor taste - a scene where Martin dudes himself up in ghetto-style gear - and the rest is just not funny. What's such a talented cast doing in this brain-dead farce?
Staff ** Slapstick, funny at times, racially tense.
Sex/Nudity: 6 scenes with innuendo, strong at times. Violence: 7 scenes, including fights. Profanity: 7 harsh expressions; 42 mild. Drugs: 13 scenes of drinking, smoking. 1 scene of drugs.
Director: Rob Marshall. With Renée Zellweger, Richard Gere, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Queen Latifah. (113 min.)
Sterritt ** Two women of the Roaring '20s land on death row after killing men who've wronged them, and their friendship turns to rivalry when they go after the same money-minded lawyer to defend them. The music is irresistible - who would have guessed Zellweger, Zeta-Jones, and Gere could hoof and croon with the best of them? But the story is a cynical take on serious human failings.
Staff ***1/2 Visual razzle-dazzle, strong acting.
Sex/Nudity: 1 sex scene; mild dance numbers. Violence: 6 scenes of mild violence. Profanity: 20 expressions. Drugs: 6 scenes of smoking, drinking.
Director: Lawrence Kasdan. With Morgan Freeman, Jason Lee, Tom Sizemore, Donnie Wahlberg. (131 min.)
Sterritt ** Four young men with a knack for mind-reading battle aliens in the New England woods. Also present is a macho military man who's supposed to stop the invasion but may be the loosest cannon of all. The main characters are compendiums of Gen-X clichés, and most of the cast is too unseasoned to transcend the silly screenplay.
Staff ** Odd, clichéd, gross.
Sex/Nudity: 4 instances of innuendo. Violence: 25 scenes, including burning aliens. Profanity: 52 expressions. Drugs: 6 scenes of heavy drinking.
Director: William Friedkin. With Tommy Lee Jones, Benicio Del Toro, Connie Nielsen, Jenna Boyd. (94 min.)
Sterritt * A former military teacher (Jones) pursues a "killing machine" (Del Toro) who learned his lessons all too well. The chief aim of this ham-fisted chase movie is to stage its story against as many Pacific Northwest backgrounds as possible. There's hardly a pause for breath. Or thought. Or anything besides fights, face-offs, and showdowns.
Staff **1/2 Predictable, gritty, good premise.
Sex/Nudity: None. Violence: 17 graphic scenes, including shootouts. Profanity: 13 expressions. Drugs: 3 scenes with drinking, smoking.
Director: Lisa Cholodenko. With Frances McDormand, Christian Bale, Kate Beckinsale. (103 min.)
Sterritt *** Fresh from medical school, a conscientious young man and his fiancée move into the southern California home of his mother, an aging flower child whose domicile does extra duty as recording studio for her young lover's rock band. The story doesn't ultimately live up to its technical polish, but it paints a vivid picture of emotional vibes emanating from the Hollywood Hills.
Director: Menno Meyjes. With John Cusack, Noah Taylor, Leelee Sobieski, Molly Parker. (106 min.)
Sterritt **** After World War I, a Jewish art dealer in Munich befriends an aspiring painter named Adolf Hitler, thinking he can distract the young man from his crazy political ideas by encouraging his creativity. This moodily filmed drama traces the roots of German fascism not only to the demented notions of the Nazis but to German culture in the early 1900s. It also explores fascism's cynical use of art and architecture to mesmerize a vulnerable society.
Staff *** Sharp, unsettling, inventive.
Sex/Nudity: 5 scenes, including implied sex, innuendo. Violence: 3 scenes, including a severe beating. Profanity: 13 strong expressions. Drugs: 27 scenes with drinking and smoking.
Director: Caroline Link. With Karoline Eckertz, Merab Ninidze, Juliane Köhler, Regine Zimmermann. (141 min.)
Sterritt *** The story begins in 1938, when a Jewish refugee from Germany's Nazi violence moves to a lonely farm in Kenya, then sends for his wife and daughter, resulting in major adjustment problems. The film focuses on the girl as she grows into adolescence. It also shows the difficulties her parents face in their new world. If lush landscapes and exotic wildlife are what you're after, this isn't the safari for you. But many viewers will respond to its understated mix of family drama and Holocaust-era history.
With (voices): John Fiedler, Jim Cummings, Ken Sansom. (75 min.)
Staff *** "Piglet's Big Movie" is a lot bigger - and better - than its predecessor, "The Tigger Movie." OK, so a 5-year-old may not see the nuance in the always dear, always pastel Pooh pals in either Disney riff, but parents will recognize a whole new level of plot development. Piglet's kindness is sorely tested by his honey-obsessed friends - until he gets lost and they realize he's a hero who may be small, but in the "biggest, helpfulest way." By Clara Germani
Sex/Nudity: None. Violence: 5 very mild scenes. Profanity: None. Drugs: None.
Director: David Cronenberg. With Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson. (98 min.)
Sterritt **** A mentally troubled man tries to understand his tormented past as he is flooded by delusions and memories of his abused childhood. Cronenberg doesn't draw clear boundary lines between illusion and reality, depicting the main character's experiences as a complex web of memories, fantasies, and dreads. Honors also go to first-rate acting by Fiennes and Richardson in many roles.
Staff ***1/2 Harrowing, metaphorical, lonely.
Sex/Nudity: 5 scenes. Violence: 3 scenes of violence, including self-mutilation. Profanity: 7 expressions. Drugs: 4 scenes of drinking, smoking.
Director: Antoine Fuqua. With Bruce Willis, Monica Bellucci. (105 min.)
Sterritt ** US soldiers led by a hard-boiled lieutenant (Willis) penetrate the Nigerian jungle to rescue an endangered Italian physician (Bellucci) who refuses to leave unless she can bring a group of refugees with her. Dark-toned camera work and moody music give this slowly paced war film a chilling atmosphere until the final scenes, when US missiles and flaming Columbia Pictures fireballs turn the climax into a reunion of combat-movie clichés.
Sex/Nudity: 1 scene of partial nudity. Violence: 10 scenes of extreme war violence, including torture. Profanity: 38 expressions.
Director: Bruno Barreto. With: Gwyneth Paltrow, Christina Applegate, Rob Lowe. (88 min.)
Staff **1/2 The movie opens with a red balloon drifting into the sky, setting the tone for the next hour and a half: light and airy, but overall a lot of fun. Paltrow's character is charming, and one can almost buy her act as a small-town girl who aspires to become a flight attendant. Mike Myers is especially funny as Paltrow's teacher. Overall, this view is clear and uncomplicated - with few clouds and plenty of sunshine. By Sasha Brown
Director: Wayne Wang. With Jennifer Lopez, Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, Bob Hoskins. (105 min.)
Sterritt ** Lopez plays a single mom who cleans hotel rooms while dreaming of a better life, and Fiennes plays the handsome politico who sweeps her into his arms. The stars of this toned-down "Pretty Woman" clone don't exude much romantic chemistry, but Wang moves the action along smoothly and has the good sense to make Manhattan itself one of the most prominent attractions.
Staff **1/2 Breezy, fun, touching.
Sex/Nudity: 1 sex scene; several instances of innuendo. Violence: 1 mild scene. Profanity: 12 expressions. Drugs: 4 scenes of smoking, drinking.


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Welcome to our website. Minichoppersus.com is a place on the world wide web that was initially created as a starting point for all mini chopper enthusiasts, with a perspective to eventually evolve to become a full blown online electronic magazine about the world of mini bikes, mini choppers, mini motorcycles, mini custom chopper kits, and to make a long story short all mini (including mid-size) motorized vehicles around the globe. Our final target to educate our audience, share our findings and knowledge on the subject and to help them in general with their quest on mini choppers.
Our interest in mini motorcycles has risen dramatically over the last 10 years when manufacturers started making cool and sexy looking pocket sized mini choppers. Choppers were a piece of art to begin with, now imagine that chopper in a mini, super small, cool version that fits in the back of your trunk. Now that is a real piece of art! There is no way in the world that someone rides one of these little motorized criters and won't get people's attention on the road, (well, to be exact, on the sidewalk, after all it is a mini chopper). Mini chopper aficionados' ages have no barriers, you can see a 17 year old rider and you can also see a 60 year old rider. That goes to show you how fun small choppers are. We even spotted a kid (under parental supervision of course inside a park) riding a mini chopper (street bike style). Through our web site we will try to educate you by trying to include as many resources as possible on minichopper: guides, howtos, mini chopper parts, do it yourself online guides (usually in PDF format), little instructional home made videos, riding videos and in general as much gathered world wide web info on mini bikes and choppers as possible in one place. Our mini chopper love will also help our readers learn details and lots of inside info on motorcycle related material such as where or how do I find out what makes a mini chopper street legal. Beginner motorcyclists can see how easy it is to obtain a licence to drive those mini chopper wonders. As our mini chopper audience grows we will try to be a bit more web 2.0 and give to you a more interactive web site, by letting you make a difference and state your mind and opinion by creating a forum, a blog and a categorized newsletter with news exciting ideas, vendors and manufacturers, from all over the world. Finally we will include as many languages as possible because the mini chopper society is getting bigger and stronger around the world, from the biggest to the smallest countries. I almost forgot to mention our love for motorcycle apparel and clothing. When we ride we've got to ride in style :-) Enjoy your stay on our web site, you are more than welcome to drop us an email with your questions or comments on mini choppers. Do not feel left out if we don't answer to you email, we receive hundreds of them weekly, and is very hard to reply to all of them. However we try to be as responsive as possible, and to get back to as many emails as our free time allows to. And remember: Ride to live and live to ride ! |
Custom chopper parts Custom choppers Street legal choppers Mini chopper kits |
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subset: commoncrawl


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I have several programs that I'm executing in a shell script:
I know that I can profile each individual program by editing the source code, but I wanted to know if there was a way I could measure the total time executed by profiling the script itself. Is there a timer program that I can use for this purpose? If so, how precise is its measurement?


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Design Notes
February 10, 2012
Hero's Heart Day 2012 Tonight
Love is in the Air... and In-Game!
Today we'll be releasing Artix's love story - "Love's Eternal Curse"! It's filled with comi-tragedy, epic battling, new faces and old... and an ending which will take a long-standing tradition and give it a new lease on life.... and love!
Event Rares You'll Love!
Are you ready for a HEART-y helping of event rares? There'll be an event rare shop featuring both Player Suggestions and art by the AQW team's artists! It will be stocked with AC items, member-only items, and we think you'll LOVE what you see! (And they won't break your heart... or your bank!) Free-player gold items will drop from the monsters and repeatable quests!
And if you're missing your favorite Hero's Heart Day releases from previous years, never fear! We'll be releasing all of those on Tuesday, February 14th!
Other Notes!
Quibble Coinbiter's shop in Battleon will get some fresh, rockin' new gear today, as well, so be sure to check his shop! And don't forget to grab your Golden Cheezburger from Cleric Joy, the 3rd I Can Has Mod contest is almost over... who will get their wish granted THIS time?!
Love's Eternal Curse... affects the AQW team!
The curse affecting the characters in this release did not stay in-game! We're all feeling it's effects as it tries to keep us from releasing! Between people being sick, files not working as they should, and Flashing continually crashing (TEN times in under an hour!)*, the curse that's keeping true lovers apart... is also keeping us from release!
We'll battle on towards an unbroken release (and unbroken hearts!), and we'll see you all tonight!
* Now 12 Flash crashes!


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US scientists are significantly more likely to publish fake research than scientists from elsewhere, finds a trawl of officially withdrawn (retracted) studies, published online in the Journal of Medical Ethics.
Fraudsters are also more likely to be "repeat offenders," the study shows.
The study author searched the PubMed database for every scientific research paper that had been withdrawn -- and therefore officially expunged from the public record -- between 2000 and 2010.
A total of 788 papers had been retracted during this period. Around three quarters of these papers had been withdrawn because of a serious error (545); the rest of the retractions were attributed to fraud (data fabrication or falsification).
The highest number of retracted papers were written by US first authors (260), accounting for a third of the total. One in three of these was attributed to fraud.
The UK, India, Japan, and China each had more than 40 papers withdrawn during the decade. Asian nations, including South Korea, accounted for 30% of retractions. Of these, one in four was attributed to fraud.
The fakes were more likely to appear in leading publications with a high "impact factor." This is a measure of how often research is cited in other peer reviewed journals.
More than half (53%) of the faked research papers had been written by a first author who was a "repeat offender." This was the case in only one in five (18%) of the erroneous papers.
The average number of authors on all retracted papers was three, but some had 10 or more. Faked research papers were significantly more likely to have multiple authors.
Each first author who was a repeat fraudster had an average of six co-authors, each of whom had had another three retractions.
"The duplicity of some authors is cause for concern," comments the author. Retraction is the strongest sanction that can be applied to published research, but currently, "[it] is a very blunt instrument used for offences both gravely serious and trivial."
Story Source:
Materials provided by BMJ-British Medical Journal. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Journal Reference:
Cite This Page:


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Children have always been taught and trained. They have been taught in the homes, in a teacher's home or in schools and at professions or trades. The history of the schools in Bergen started around 1150 when Bergen Grammar School was established. In the times that followed, school buildings became increasingly noticeable around town, and they still tell their stories about which position schools have held trough time.
Baard Olav Skogrand
The history of Bergen is long and varied, and the needs in education and training reflects upon this variety. In the central parts of Bergen you will never find yourself far from a building or address with some kind of school history related to it. Often this is likely to be one of the many private schools in 19th century Bergen, and a few decades into the 20th century. Even though some of the schools were quite large, the history of private education is dominated by many and small units. More often than not the school's owner (and main teacher) run the school in his or her home, giving classes in the main room of the house. Very many of the houses in Bergen are likely to have housed a small school like this. Professionally organized schools in Bergen started some time around 1150 with the Grammar School at Holmen, near Bergenhus Fort and Castle. This was mainly a school that aimed to educate clericals, but the school probably was generally important for the town as well. At the time, Bergen was a trading town in growth as well as the administrative centre of Norway and was in need of trained writers in both capacities. After the Reformation the Grammar School was moved to St. Olav's Church, which was Bergen's new Cathedral. The school was initially situated north of the Cathedral. The building we find at this site today, is the one that was raised after the big fire in 1702. In the 1840ies the school was moved to the south side of the Cathedral, to the building which is today's Grammar School. If we walk a bit north to Øvregaten, we find Christi Krybbe School. Established in 1740, it was the first parish school in Bergen, and marked the beginning of modern school history. This one, and other parish schools which followed soon after, were schools for the poor, meant for the most unfortunate children in town. This was 200 years after the Reformation had brought with it the idea that education was a general need. When salvation became a matter between the individual and God, it was no longer sufficient for the priest to know the Gospel. The individual person now needed to obtain a minimum of knowledge. In 1539 the Church demanded that the children were taught Luther's little Catechism in their parishes. This kind of education did for the most part consist of learning by heart – the parish clerk read out loud, and the children repeated. Starting out in the early 18th century, the pietistic movement played an important role in advocating the need for skills in reading and writing. The pietistic movement held the Gospel as a guiding line for Christian living, which made it vital for the believer to personally be able to read the holy texts of the New Testament. During the first decades of the century a number of pietistic schools were established. With Christian VI (1730-46), the pietistic movement had stretched itself all the way to the Danish-Norwegian throne. King Christian VI passed decrees on confirmation and rural schools, and thus turned the school history toward an organized direction. In 1889 a law was passed on primary schools in Norway, giving free education for all children in the whole country. The establishment of a modern unitary school system was an important matter for the young nation Norway, and large resources was put into the development of the educational system. If we look at some of the schools that were built in Bergen around this time, we easily accept that they must have appeared like small palaces in a town that was still dominated by little wooden houses. Indeed, they still appear like small palaces. These schools were built at an astonishing speed in spite of Bergen's general financial straits. Great prestige was put into these building projects. The schools were large and beautiful, and they were built on some of the best building sites in Bergen. The schools were to become important arenas for public health, something that was taken into consideration when the schools were still on the drawing table. Light angles and air volume per pupil was carefully calculated. Noteworthy for Bergen is that the school's corridors were built more spacious than in schools in general at this time. Bergen is of course a town cursed with great amounts of rain, and most children didn't have good clothes to protect them from the bad weather. They often needed to stay indoors in the corridors during recess. The continued school history in Bergen during the 20th century is a story about new schools in an expanding city. Up until the 1970ies, new schools were built large and monumental, with Fridalen School (1938) as the grandest. But from the 1970ies on, it has been common to build small units and pavilions.


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"A quirk in media players from Microsoft and RealNetworks could enable attackers to hijack Web browsers and run scripts on the computers of some MP3 music fans.
The trick has apparently been discovered by pornography sites and spammers, which have been seeding some music file trading services with bogus MP3 music files.
One such MP3 file, ostensibly containing the music of the Los Angeles-based rock group Lifehouse, launched a pornographic video and generated a "massive" amount of pop-up ads when played back on the Windows Media Player from Microsoft, according to one newsgroup report. "


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Mr Gutter Cleaner Pueblo
The best gutter cleaning service and Maintenance Pueblo has depended on for years!
You don't have to worry about cleaning your clogged gutters and downspouts any longer! We are the trusted choice for the best professional Pueblo gutter cleaning services. Pueblo homeowners consistently turn to the property maintenance and cleaning experts Pueblo Gutter Cleaning to provide the highest quality gutter and downspout cleaning services. Our trained specialists thoroughly examine your downspouts and gutter systems to determine how to most effectively clean your gutters. Our Pueblo Gutter Cleaning specialists will take care of any clogged gutters. We are the best choice for gutter cleaning in Pueblo, Colorado.
Pueblo () is a home rule municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Pueblo County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 111,876 at the 2020 United States Census, making Pueblo the ninth most populous city in Colorado. Pueblo is the principal city of the Pueblo, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area and a major city of the Front Range Urban Corridor. Pueblo is situated at the confluence of the Arkansas River and Fountain Creek, 112 miles (180 km) south of the Colorado State Capitol in Denver. The area is considered semi-arid desert land, with approximately 12 inches (304.80 mm) of precipitation annually.
Access Point Pueblo, Avondale, Belmont, Bessemer, Beulah Heights, Big Hill, Blende, Briargate, Bruner Park, City of Pueblo Planning & Community Development, Club, Colorado Springs Neighborhood, Downtown, Eagleridge Homes Real Estate Development, Eden


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Platinum Cars Marietta
Used car dealership with a solid inventory of pre-owned vehicles at reduced prices.
Platinum Cars Marietta is a family owned used car dealership in Marietta, GA. Our inventory caters to all budgets and needs. Visit our showroom to find a great deal on a car with low mileage.
Marietta is a city in and the county seat of Cobb County, Georgia, United States. At the 2020 census, the city had a population of 60,972. The 2019 estimate was 60,867, making it one of Atlanta's largest suburbs. Marietta is the fourth largest of the principal cities by population of the Atlanta metropolitan area. == History == === Etymology === The origin of the name is uncertain.
Addison Heights, Atlanta Country Club Estates, Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA, Bolton Hills, Brookhaven, Brookmere, Buckhead, Cambridge Grove, Carver Hills, Caswell Overlook Community Association, Chattahoochee Plantation, Cumberland, East Chastain Park, Fort Hill Homes, Fortress Builders


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Thursday, August 26, 2010
Claims back on track
As I mentioned last week, the unexpected rise in weekly unemployment claims that rattled the market could have been due to the vagaries of seasonal adjustment. This week's unexpected fall in claims suggests that I was correct.
The top chart shows seasonally adjusted claims, while the bottom shows actual claims. Actual claims have fallen the past two weeks, and now the seasonally adjusted claims number is catching up. What happened last week was that actual claims did not fall as much as the seasonals expected, probably because they didn't rise as much as expected in July. Note also that the actual claims number has hit a new low for the year, and the continuing claims number has been trending down since peaking in June of last year.
By next week, we'll probably see the adjusted number fall a bit further, to show that claims are about where they've been on average since January. In short, all the hoopla over claims has been an exercise in futility, because there has been no real change in the underlying fundamentals of the labor market so far this year. The much-anticipated double-dip recession is still a no-show in the data.
8 comments:
- Jake said...
back to what would be the highest level in a decade outside of the outsized spike in the freefall of '08-'09
joy... - August 26, 2010 at 7:31 AM
- brodero said...
We should hit a low sometime in September with regard to NSA claims numbers then pickup gradually
through the end of the year....BLS
has the low on September 11th but
if they could easily be off...seasonal facot wise... - August 26, 2010 at 7:34 AM
- John said...
Along with the unemployment claims pessimism raking the comment columns (not so much here, but over on SA) is the constant negative drumbeat on housing. A good interpretation of the consensus is that housing construction will not return in any size for the remainder of the decade.
I have just finished listening to the a recording of the Toll Bros (TOL) conference call. Bob Toll has a fair record of being a straight shooter...back in '08 he clearly said things were bad and getting worse. While he does look for silver linings he is no polyanna. He is an old head in a tough, cyclical business and he is has been very successful. His thoughts and opinions are worth a listen.
For the macro only readers who ignore all things micro, don't bother with this. For those of you who would appreciate a look into a top notch homebuilder who get their hands dirty every day in the real world of housing, there might be a few interesting facts to ponder. - August 26, 2010 at 8:23 AM
- John said...
Congrats to you (and Brodero) for picking up on the statistical anomoly on the claims number.
We get the GDP number tomorrow. I don't think there is a market participant alive who thinks over 1.5% is even possible. A 1% number is probably baked in the cake. Below 1% might be a small problem, depending on how far below it is. I would be interested in Scott and Brodero's take on how big the import drag is on the number. If its a big factor, it might not be so negative, no? - August 26, 2010 at 10:02 AM
- Scott Grannis said...
Q2 is old news, so I doubt there will be much reaction to the number. But if it is revised down I will be interested to see if the deflator is revised up.
- August 26, 2010 at 10:10 AM
- brodero said...
John...I think a lot of amateur
eco nerds (Myself included) are going to eagerly watch the import
drag....I know Merrill Lynch
expects a 1.5% with net exports
causing a drag of 3.2% on the GDP
numbers...they do not expect net
exports to be drag in the next quarter.... - August 26, 2010 at 10:32 AM
- John said...
I take it that you think the trade deficit improves in the current quarter? In other words the increase in imports seen last quarter will not be sustained and thus not be the GDP drag it is likely to be in Q2? - August 26, 2010 at 10:45 AM
- brodero said...
I do not the increase in consumer
goods imports being repeated in the third quarter...however residential,structures and state and
local will be a drag this quarter.... - August 26, 2010 at 10:49 AM


text:
I answered in the comments:
The Congressman described the fetus's humanity: It does something that we are invited to recognize as part of our shared human condition and therefore to appreciate its reality and to feel empathy.Let's remember that, under the law, the abortion right — in the Supreme Court's idealized image — is based on the idea of the woman's entitlement to define her own concept of "the mystery of human life." This is a "philosophic exercise" that "originate[s] within the zone of conscience and belief." This is a deeply serious matter — to the Court. But who believes it? Abortion opponents resist the idea either because they are sure the fetus is a human being or because they wouldn't trust the woman to base her decision whether to abort on sincere conscientious beliefs about the humanity of the unborn. Those who support abortion rights seem — for the most part — to have forgotten the nature of the decision that is reserved, under the law, for the woman. Laughing at the unborn is egregious evidence of this forgetting.
The mockers are taking this delicately stated image of the fetus touching or holding its genitals and turning it into a picture of a baby masturbating — "jerking off," "spanking the monkey" — and asking us to laugh at it, even as we are expected to accept its being killed. The very thing that the Congressman used to call us to think of it as human, they would laugh at before killing it.
If you are going to take it into your hands to kill a human being, you don't diminish it and laugh at it first. For example, an execution — assuming it is permitted at all, as it is in the United States — is carried out with somber respect. Even as this human being will be killed, we must demonstrate that we understand the profundity of what we are doing.
Picture executions where the condemned person is subjected to mockery first. (That was done to Jesus, by the way.) Some would say any death penalty is wrong, just as some would say that any abortion is wrong. But few would say that ridiculing the condemned being — dehumanizing him — is acceptable.
In their eagerness to deny that the fetus is a person, abortion rights proponents — some of them — are making sport of it.
This reminds me of Kermit Gosnell joking about a large fetus, saying that it was big enough to walk to the bus stop. Think about why that was considered shocking by many people.
Here's an idea for an abortion regulation that I've never heard anyone else discuss, but which occurred to me as I've read and reread the Supreme Court cases. A woman seeking an abortion must sign a statement: I have reflected on the nature of the procedure I am about to undergo, and I attest to my sincere belief that it will not kill a human being.


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At $199, Blackberry Playbook realizes its actual value
<b style="color:#900;">commentary</b> At $199, the BlackBerry PlayBook may have finally found its true value. But it may be too late for RIM's tablet to gain any traction in the market.
commentary RIM's Blackberry PlayBook tablet is now on sale for $199 at Best Buy. A price it should have had all along.
Like Hewlett-Packard's ill-fated TouchPad, which stalled at $499 but became an instant hit at $99, the PlayBook is now seeing newfound popularity at $199 (16GB), discounted from $499.
In fact, the $199 BlackBerry tablet is now listed as "unavailable" at most Best Buy stores in the U.S. For example, a Best Buy in suburban Los Angeles said it had sold out of the $199 PlayBook "a couple of days ago," according to a sales representative, though the store had stock of the $299 (32GB) model.
Another suburban Los Angeles Best Buy was down to one 16GB model as of Wednesday night. Sales representatives at both stores said Best Buy would continue to sell at the discounted prices until all units are sold out.
Which brings us to the PlayBook's close cousin, the Amazon Kindle Fire. This, in essence, is a PlayBook minus the camera and a few connectors. Like the Fire, it's made by ODM (original design manufacturer) powerhouse Quanta, uses similar, if not the same, materials on the outside, the same screen, and the same Texas Instruments dual-core silicon inside.
Amazon was savvy enough to price it at $199 (8GB) from the get-go and design an interface that appeals to a wide audience right out of the box with just the right number of apps. (I've been using the Kindle Fire for about a week.)
Though the PlayBook's interface and apps are nothing to sneer at (I have PlayBook also), it was priced for too long at $499 and up, killing any chance for mass-market appeal.
And in the context of HP's $99 TouchPad, the PlayBook may be a harsh lesson for other tablet makers.
That lesson? With the exception of Apple's iPad, it will be increasingly difficult to sell a popular tablet for more than $400. The operative word here is "popular"--as in the iPad and Fire.
Motorola will likely sell its upcoming updates to the Android-based Xoom tablet at prices above $400. But my guess is that consumers won't buy these in numbers that rival those of the iPad or Fire, if recent history is any lesson.
That said, Google (slated to become Motorola's new owner) has the wherewithal to tinker with its business model, and Motorola under Google ownership will likely outlast, and prevail over, lesser companies that don't have the stomach to stick it out in the hypercompetitive Android tablet market.


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A massive double car bombing and a mortar strike targeted pro-government neighborhoods Tuesday in two of Syria's largest cities, killing at least 54 people a day after President Bashar Assad declared his candidacy for re-election.
The attacks in Damascus and Homs heightened fears of an escalation ahead of the contentious June 3 vote and showed that despite a series of battlefield setbacks, the rebels remain capable of hitting the government and its core of support.
Now in its fourth year, Syria's conflict has left the country a chaotic tableau of localized battles whose front lines shift back and forth, but have little impact on the wider war. The map of control has remained largely unaltered: Assad holds sway in Damascus and the corridor that runs up to the Mediterranean coast, while the rebels control most of the north along the Turkish border and the Kurdish minority controls a corner in the northeast.
But the rebels are feeling squeezed in the capital, Damascus, and in Homs, Syria's third-largest city and an opposition stronghold since the beginning of the uprising against Assad. The government has taken a two-pronged approach to crushing resistance in both areas: suffocating blockades that eventually force cease-fires and a fierce offensive along the Lebanese frontier that has severely restricted the flow of weapons and fighters along cross-border supply lines.
In Homs, the rebels are growing desperate as government forces ramp up their assault on the last remaining pockets of opposition in the Old City. Among the hundreds of fighters still holding out in besieged districts, some talk of surrender while others have lashed out at the government with suicide car bombings in pro-Assad districts.
Tuesday's double car bombing struck near the pro-government Zahra and Abbasiyeh neighborhoods — an area predominantly inhabited by Christians and members of Assad's Alawite sect. At least 40 people were killed and another 116 wounded, the official SANA news agency said. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also put the death toll at 40 and said more than 80 were wounded.
The explosions struck 10 minutes apart and 150 yards (meters) from each other on a busy residential and commercial thoroughfare.
"When I arrived at the scene, fire and smoke and medics were still carrying away the wounded," said one resident, who declined to give his name for fear of reprisals. He said homes and shops were heavily damaged in the blast, which also set several cars on fire.
Homs governor Tala Barazi said such crimes "target security, stability and ongoing national reconciliation in the province."
In Damascus, several mortar shells slammed into a school in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Shaghour, killing 14 people and wounding 86, the state news agency reported. The Observatory said 19 people were killed, including 14 children.
It was one of the deadliest mortar attacks on central Damascus since the conflict began in March 2011.
In footage of the aftermath broadcast on Syria's pro-government Al-Ikhbariya TV, blood and glass littered the floor. Shoes were scattered about, along with a cap, a religious book and other belongings. One body was laid out on the ground and covered with a blanket. Two bloodied feet protruded from under the cloth.
Rebels frequently fire mortars into government-controlled districts in central Damascus from opposition-held suburbs, many of which have been under a crippling government blockade for months, with no food and medicine allowed to reach civilians trapped inside.
The government move to pacify Homs and shore up its hold on the Damascus suburbs comes ahead of the June 3 presidential election, which Assad is widely expected to win. The vote is widely perceived as an attempt to give Assad a veneer of electoral legitimacy even as the country remains engulfed in a bloody rebellion against his rule. The opposition and its Western allies have denounced holding elections now as a farce.
Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, on Tuesday dismissed the idea that the vote could be credible or fair.
"Although we all look forward to the day when meaningful balloting can take place in Syria, that day is not June 3, nor anytime in the near future," Power said.
Meanwhile, the international chemical weapons watchdog announced it was sending a team to investigate recent allegations about the use of chlorine gas in the war.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said the Syrian government has agreed to the mission, and will provide security in areas under its control.
Syrian opposition forces have accused the government of attacking rebel-held areas with chlorine gas several times in recent months. Syria denies the allegations.
A chemical weapons team is already in the process of eliminating Syria's chemical weapons stockpile. So far, it has removed more than 90 percent of the government's declared stockpile.
While chlorine was first deployed militarily in World War I, it is no longer officially considered a warfare agent and was not among the chemicals declared by Syria when it joined the chemical weapons treaty.
However, a spokesman for the chemical weapons watchdog, Michael Luhan, noted that ""using any toxic chemical to kill or hurt people would be a violation of the convention."
In Damascus, four more presidential hopefuls registered their candidacy for Syria's presidential election, bringing the total of registered contenders to 11, state TV said.
Boston Herald
Photo: A man looks at destroyed buildings from Syrian Government forces shelling in Khaldiyeh, Homs Photo: AP Photo/Shaam News Network


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4653.0 - Environment and Energy News, Dec 2000
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 14/12/2000
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PDF version (including graphics) of Environment and Energy News, December 2000.
ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT AND ENERGY STATISTICS SECTION The Environment and Energy Statistics Section (EESS) of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) is a multi-disciplinary team involved in the research and analysis of environmental and energy issues based on ABS and non-ABS data. Since its inception in June 1991, EESS's scope has progressively expanded and advances made into new areas of environment statistics. Notable achievements include:
Staff at EESS have experience at researching and collating data from various sources for publication. Various products and services, such as consultancy and user funded data gathering, will be considered against other priorities. Data can be customised to suit specific requirements. ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER The ABS Environment Statistics Newsletter is produced on a half yearly basis. It features news and developments in relation to work done by EESS. If you would like to be placed on our electronic mailing list, please contact Boon Lim and leave your address details. Boon Lim 3a7 Environment & Energy Statistics Section Australian Bureau of Statistics PO Box 10, Belconnen ACT 2616 Tel: (02) 6252 6186 Fax: (02) 6252 5335 Email: email@example.com ENVIRONMENT AND ENERGY STATISTICS SECTION WEBPAGES EESS has a collection of environment statistics on the ABS environment statistics web site. The information is extracted mainly from ABS publications and other external publications. Information is presented in the form of tables, maps, graphs and dot key points where appropriate. A range of topics are covered and these are listed on the web site in batches and rotated periodically as statistical data are updated. Students, teachers and other interested readers are welcome to use the statistics and can refer back to the original ABS publications for further information and/or clarification if desired. Comments, queries and/or feedback can be forwarded to Boon Lim at the following email address: firstname.lastname@example.com WATER ACCOUNT FOR AUSTRALIA In May this year the environment and Energy Statistics Section of the ABS released Water Account for Australia 1993-94 to 1996-97 (Cat. No. 4610.0). This was the first attempt at producing an environmental account for water in Australia and one of only a few examples of a water account in the world. This report presents quantitative water resource data on a State and national level, and details on the supply of water from, and the use of water by, various sectors. Water reuse and discharge of water back to the environment are also presented. An analysis of water use, water consumption and economic data are also presented, providing some economic water efficiency measures. It is planned to undertake the next Water Account for 2000-01 and the ABS is seeking feedback about the future directions of the Water Account and how it can better link into data collection activities of other organisations. The focus of the Water Account for 2000-01 is likely to include:
Consideration is being given to include some of the following issues in the next edition of the Water Account:
A summary of the main findings on the first water account is available on this site. Contact: Christina Jackson Email: email@example.com ENERGY DIRECTORY Production and subsequent use of energy affects all Australians, all sectors of the economy and the environment. Currently the supply of energy products relies heavily on fossil fuels namely coal, oil and gas. International and domestic pressure, however is placing emphasis on the importance of the development of renewable and sustainable energy sources for the national market. For example, a program that is making an impact is the Greenpower choice for electricity where energy consumers are using electricity from alternative power sources such as wind power, hydro-electricity and solar power. A number of changes in the energy market such as the national energy market and the deregulation of the electricity supply in most States is increasing the interest in energy statistics. Australia's international commitments to the Kyoto protocol and organisations such as the International Energy Agency and the Organisation for Economic and Country Development also require access to energy statistics from a number of sources. The Australian and New Zealand Minerals and Energy Council (ANZMEC) and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) are attempting to satisfy the need for energy statistics by presenting a web site for the Directory of Energy Statistics. In 1992 the first edition of the energy directory highlighted sources of data for the energy sector. This web site contains updated information on Australian sources of energy and related data from both the public and private sectors. The detail includes contacts, a brief description of the purpose, the level of coverage, the collection type and much more. The ABS Energy Directory is available from this site. Contact: Mark Nelson Email: firstname.lastname@example.com ENERGY ACCOUNT Energy Accounts, Australia: 1992-93 - 1997-98 (Cat. 4604.0), is now due for release in February 2001. The revised release date allows the inclusion of the most recent greenhouse gas emissions data, based on energy use data for 1997-98. This is the second Energy Account to be released by EESS, describing the stock of primary energy resources in Australia, and the flow of these resources through the Australian economy. The publication will present tables on the supply and use of both primary and secondary energy products such as black and brown coal, crude oil, natural gas, electricity and petroleum products, as well as renewable energy resources such as solar, bagasse and hydroelectricity. In addition, the supply of greenhouse gas emissions by industry for each of the financial years will be presented. More extensive analysis will present direct and total energy requirements derived from the integration of physical and monetary input-output tables, including indicators of energy and greenhouse gas intensities. The consumption of indirect and embodied energy by final users such as households and exports will also be examined. Contact: Sarah Coleman Email: firstname.lastname@example.com HOUSEHOLD SURVEYS Since 1992, ABS household survey program has included an environmental component, which is published as Environmental Issues: People's Views and Practices, ABS Cat. No. 4602.0. The latest (sixth) edition was released on 29.11.00. The 3 main topics surveyed were: 1. Household waste management: Data included types of household waste recycled, recycling method, recycling frequency, reasons for not recycling, awareness of hazardous waste disposal facilities, and household hazardous waste disposal methods. 2. Habits of motor vehicle owners: Data included number of registered vehicles, air-conditioning in motor vehicles, vehicle fuel type, frequency of vehicle servicing, purchase of motor vehicles, and factors considered in vehicle purchase. 3. Use of transport: Data included forms of transport to work/study, reasons for using public transport, reasons for not using public transport to work/study, availability of public transport, reasons for walking/cycling to work/study, reasons for not walking/cycling, reasons for taking passengers, and reasons for not taking passengers. A summary of the main findings and other related information on the publication are available on this site. Contact: Boon Lim Email: firstname.lastname@example.com ENVIRONMENT PROTECTION EXPENDITURE Between March and May 2000, the Environment and Energy Statistics Section undertook a comprehensive user review of the publication Environment Protection Expenditure, Australia (4603.0). In light of comments provided, it has been decided to modify the collection of information about environmental protection expenditures in the following ways:
In order to develop and test new questions to meet these user needs, it has been necessary to postpone dispatch of the next survey until August 2001, covering the 2000-2001 financial year. Data from the collection will be published in mid 2002. This work is being conducted jointly by the Environment and Energy Section and the Melbourne Office. Key points of the previous publication are available on this site. Contact: Adam Sincock Email: email@example.com ENVIRONMENTAL EXPENDITURE, LOCAL GOVERNMENT, AUSTRALIA 1998-99 The second publication presenting estimates of expenditures and revenues related to environment protection and natural resource management by local government authorities of Australia was released in July 2000. The statistics are based on a survey of local governments across Australia that measures expenditure on services and activities to protect the environment and to manage the natural resources within each municipality, as well as councils' revenue related to provision of these services. Details of financial transfers relating to the environment between Commonwealth, State and local governments are included. The data is also linked to the information presented in Environmental Protection Expenditure, Australia (Cat. No. 4603.0). The expenditures and related revenues are divided into 2 accounts, 'Environmental Protection' and 'Natural Resource Management'. Environment Protection groups together all actions and activities whose primary purpose is the prevention, reduction or elimination of waste, pollution or other degradation of the environment. The Environment Protection account is divided into 7 different categories: waste water management; solid waste management; biodiversity and landscape; soil and groundwater; ambient air and climate; cultural heritage; and other environment protection. Natural Resource Management covers all activities relating to making more efficient use of natural resources. The 3 categories are: inland water management; land management and development; and other natural resource management. A summary and other related information on the publication are available on this site. Contact: Kate Maguire Email: firstname.lastname@example.com AUSTRALIA'S ENVIRONMENT: ISSUES AND TRENDS The first edition of Australia's Environment: Issues and Trends (Cat. No. 4613.0) will be released in February 2001 by the Environment and Energy Statistics Section of the Australian Bureau of Statistics. This annual publication presents environmental issues in a holistic manner by linking the relationship between the three spheres of the environment, the economy and society. Environmental statistics and information on selected issues which affect the future of Australia and its people are examined. Data and information are derived from ABS collections and from a wide range of other sources. Some of the relevant important issues covered in the first edition include land-use and land tenure in Australia, with a detailed look at agriculture and the impacts that farming have on the environment and the economy; the distribution of weeds; forestry and the growth of plantations; the conservation status of selected marine and freshwater fisheries; a profile of aquaculture; changes to Australia's inland rivers; the impacts of shipping and ballast water on the marine environment; global warming; and the influence of age, education and income on the environmental attitudes and behaviour of Australians. Contact: Darren Evans Email: email@example.com INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC ACCOUNTING The ABS played a leading role in the International Workshop on Environmental and Economic Accounting which was held in Manila, Philippines, from 18 to 22 September 2000. It was organised jointly by the National Statistical Coordination Board of the Philippines, the United Nations Statistical Division and the United Nations Development Program. The Workshop was attended by fifty-one participants from fourteen countries and special administrative region in the Asia-Pacific region namely: Australia, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong China, Indonesia, Japan, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Viet Nam. The Workshop aimed to serve as a venue to review, compare, and discuss the work-in-progress in the development of environmental accounting in the ASEAN region, in particular, and in the Asia-Pacific region, in general. Specifically, it aimed to:
It was agreed that a formal Network (Forum) be created to facilitate the communication among the countries in order to advance environmental accounting in the Asia Pacific region. It will focus on sharing experiences in the area of environmental accounting, with all countries working toward achieving the same goals. Improved environment statistics will be an indirect result of the implementation of the environmental accounts. Membership of the group will be open, especially to countries of the Asia-Pacific region. Contact: Bob Harrison Email: email@example.com AUSSTATS The ABS has recently released its new AusStats service which is available via the ABS web site and gives subscribers access to a variety of ABS information, such as publications, spreadsheets and datasets. AusStats is updated daily at 11:30 am, providing full access to the latest facts and figures about the nation. AusStats allows access to a wide range of information, including:
AusStats is only available by subscription with subscription options starting at $1,080. To organise a subscription or to find out more about AusStats, contact the ABS on 13000 135 070, email email@example.com or get in touch with the person below. Contact: Mira Kwasik Email: firstname.lastname@example.com MORE ENVIRONMENT INFORMATION ON THE STATISTICAL CLEARING HOUSE WEB SITE The Statistical Clearing House (SCH) is the central clearance point for all Commonwealth Government surveys involving 50 or more businesses. As a by-product of the clearance process, the SCH maintains the Commonwealth Business Surveys Register (located at http://www.sch.abs.gov.au). The Register lists information about business surveys conducted by Commonwealth Government covering diverse topics such as Environment Industry, Agriculture, Research and Development, Energy, and much much more. Ever wondered how to conduct a survey? The SCH web site also contains reference material on basic survey design methods, information about standards and classifications, international practices and other useful reference information. Contact: Peter Meadows Email: firstname.lastname@example.com Document Selection These documents will be presented in a new window. |


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Screenshot | Link | Fashion Belle's Review |
Spend time among the 14 websites that make up Blair brands, and you will be sure to find modest clothing options, especially if you are looking for culottes, split skirts and gauchos (use the search bar at each website to type in these key words). Suits with long skirts are also plentiful among Blair brands which usually found among the menu options for suiting. Shipping is limited to the United States and Canada. |
Women's regular, plus and maternity sizes are offered in addition to several basic styles in girls' sizes. Orders may be placed online for international shipping from Israel, and several retail outlets are located in Europe and North America. |
This large supplier of exclusively modest clothing is based in the United States and ships internationally. All sizes from toddler to women's plus are offered, including maternity and nursing. Most clothing is made to order and requires two to four weeks for processing. |
Dressing For His Glory offers a few basic styles of modest skirts, culottes, skorts, swimwear and tees in a broad range of sizes. All items are made to order and require "two weeks from click to ship," as posted on the site. |
Long skirts are the strength of this modest clothing manufacturer, with a deep selection in regular sizes 2 to 20 as well as maternity. Several jackets to match are also worth a look. This manufacturer produces exclusive designs through family-owned sewing businesses located around the world. |
Find trendy skirts, three-quarter sleeve knit tops and accessories to add modesty to outfits from this Israel-based manufacturer. Also look for a collection of running skirts, some with built-in leggings underneath, as an alternative to culottes. |
Select from USA, Canada or UK sites using links at the top. This Jordan-based company has grown to serve conservatively-dressed customers from a wide range of backgrounds. The extent of this company's selection of stylish, floor-length skirts is rare in the Western apparel market. |
The strength of this retailer lies in its exclusive A-line long skirt design. The dresses, jumpers and tops tend toward a country flair. |
Great Lengths Clothing, with the tagline, "Modest Clothes at Modest Prices," is an online merchant that compiles a selection of styles manufactured by other companies. The categories include day dresses, formals, skirts, tops, knee shorts, capris and plus sizes. Pre-teen sizes are also offered. |
Based in India and shipping internationally, eShakti offers designer styling with a rare concept in customer service, the ability to order your own custom lengths of hemlines, necklines and sleeves for each style. Prices are listed in your choice of US dollars or Indian rupees, but payment is also accepted in other currencies. This company has a good reputation for e-mail and phone customer support and for security of credit card transactions. This company was apparently also known as Zapelle but is transitioning business to the eShakti site. |
This Jewish clothing supplier started out with retail store locations in Brooklyn, New York, and then expanded to include online ordering. Shoppers will find a moderate selection of tops, skirts and dresses trending toward teen fashion. This store is also sometimes referred to with an added "s" on the name similar to its web address, Junees dot com. |
The thousands of one-of-a-kind products available from this vintage warehouse will take time to view, but plenty of modest options exist, especially in the maxi dress and skirt categories. |


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It's a hardy serving with earthy black olives, tender beans and pungent chunks of tuna. I also add some red onion for crunch and sweet heat. And, I drizzle on good olive oil for richness, and some vinegar for a tangy finish.
My cupboard tinned treat requires some minimal assembly, but no cooking. Serve as a side, or load on an extra scoop or two, and it's an entree.
- 1 small can (5 ounces) tuna - in oil or water. Canned tuna or from a pouch.
- 1 small can (15 ounces) of white beans - drain and rinse. Okay to use any favorite canned whole bean.
- 1/2 can of black olives - drain and roughly chop. Okay to use pre-sliced.
- 1/2 small red onion - chopped. Okay to use white or yellow instead.
- 2 tablespoons olive oil - or any tasty oil. Skip oil if you use canned tuna in oil.
- 1 tablespoon vinegar - white, rice, balsamic, or any you have on hand. Can also use lemon or lime juice.
- Salt and pepper to taste.
Drain beans and rinse off any sauce. Roughly chop 1/2 can of drained whole black olives (okay to use pre-chopped 1/2 can of olives.) Chop 1/2 of a small red onion.
Into a medium bowl add beans, olives and red onion, and mix. Salt and pepper to taste. Mix in 2 tablespoons of olive oil and one tablespoon of vinegar.
Add a can of drained tuna. If tuna is in oil, then add the oil, too (you can leave out the 2 tablespoons of oil mentioned above.) Lightly mix until tuna is incorporated - I like to leave the tuna chunky. Serve chilled or at room temperature.


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- Rubella vaccine
- A vaccine designed to prevent rubella, or German measles. German measles was once seen merely as a child's unpleasant rite of passage. It was thought to be a mild malady that was usually over and done in three days. So what? Then an outbreak of rubella began in 1964. It lasted two years and infected more than 12 million people in the US alone. The epidemic affected some 20,000 American children, who were born deaf, mentally retarded or otherwise disabled because their mothers had rubella during pregnancy. This disaster led to a campaign at NIH (the National Institutes of Health) to find a vaccine for rubella. Dr. Harry Martin Meyer, Jr. directed the effort, with Dr. Paul D. Parkman. Working rapidly, they introduced the first rubella vaccine in 1966, assuring safe and lasting immunity at low cost. Hank Meyer and Paul Parkman also devised a test to measure a person's immunity to rubella. The rubella vaccine has since been refined into the vaccine now known as MMR for mumps, measles and rubella. The congenital rubella syndrome is now largely a chapter in the history of medicine, thanks to the rubella vaccine.
Medical dictionary. 2011.


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I prefer land to niggers...the natives are like children. They are just emerging from barbarism...one should kill as many niggers as possible.Thus a petition calling for the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes from Oriel College, quoting Rhodes' words against him.
Or so it says. But I'm going to try to trace the source, or sources...
The first five words are quoted twice in Felix Gross's 1956 biography of Rhodes. The second time he gives a source: Rhodes is supposed to have made the remark to his then friend Olive Schreiner at the dinner table. It's not clear how Gross would have known that. Schriener herself puts the words in the mouth of her fictional character Trooper Peter Halket (whom Gross refers to, and quotes, at the beginning of his book):
...but Cecil Rhodes, he'll keep their noses to the grindstone.' 'I prefer land to niggers,' he says. They say he's going to parcel them out, and make them work on our lands whether they like it or not.The middle passage comes from a speech given by Rhodes, as Prime Minister, in the Cape parliament in 1894:
Now, I say the natives are children. They are just emerging from barbarism. They have human minds, and I would like them to devote themselves wholly to the local matters that surround them and appeal to them...The last eight words I can find only in various forms of the same synthetic quotation. The earliest of them seems to Adekeye Adebajo's Opinion piece attacking Rhodes in 2006: there the three parts are separate quotations. When the same writer recycled his work in 2011 it was a single quotation, with ellipses. By 2015 the second ellipsis had been replaced with '[and]'. This is not the work of a scrupulous scholar.
But I may have traced the original in Gordon Le Sueur's account in his biography of Rhodes:
...we saw the officer in charge of police, and he said that a patrol was going out that very day to attack the kraal on the kopje under which we had spent the night. He spoke of a fight they had had a short time before, and on Rhodes asking how many were killed he replied, 'Very few, as the natives threw down their arms, went on their knees, and begged for mercy." "Well," said Rhodes, "you should not spare them. You should kill all you can, as it serves as a lesson to them when they talk things over at their fires at night. They count up the killed, and say So-and-so is dead and So-and-so is no longer here, and they begin to fear you."__
Having found all this, I had the right search terms to discover that I wasn't the first. Madeleine Briggs points out that Adebajo assembled the three (mis)quotations from Paul Maylam's biography. Briggs reports that Schreiner apparently got her quotation from another of Rhodes' speeches in Cape House, misremembered by her.
None of this vindicates Rhodes. Schreiner fell out with Rhodes over his support for the "Strop Bill" which would have imposed a sentence of flogging on any native servant convicted of even a minor dereliction of duty: the Bill proved too illiberal for some Boers and did not pass:
Mr Hofmeyr, leader of the Bond, opposed it with the remark that he was not going to vote for a bill which made the lashing of his old coloured servant woman compulsory if she should be convicted of bringing him his coffee half an hour late.Rhodes' speech in 1894, horribly patronising but apparently benevolent, was in support of the Glen Grey Act, which replaced communal land ownership with smallholdings for a small number of natives, displacing the rest. The individual titles were small enough so that they failed to meet the property requirement of Rhodes' Franchise and Ballot Act, and land accumulation was prohibited. It was a progenitor of apartheid.
What then of the statue? I'd keep it. We should remember the past, and we should remember that we put up statues in celebration of it. But that's easy for me to say: if the members of Oriel want it gone, so be it.
(h/t Tim Worstall)


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VANDERBIJLPARK, South Africa – The brother of double-amputee athlete Oscar Pistorius went on trial in a South African court Wednesday for the death of a woman in a road collision in 2008.
Carl Pistorius, who faces a charge of culpable homicide, or negligent killing, wore a dark suit and was accompanied by his sister, Aimee. Oscar Pistorius, who was charged with murdering his girlfriend on Feb. 14, was not present. The Olympian hasn't been seen in public since he was granted bail at Pretoria Magistrate's Court on Feb. 22. His lawyers plan to challenge his bail restrictions on Thursday.
Initial proceedings in Carl Pistorius' case at Vanderbijlpark Magistrate's Court in Johannesburg focused on a request by South Africa's national broadcaster, SABC, to show the trial proceedings live on national television or record them for later use.
Magistrate Buks du Plessis said reporters could attend the trial but turned down the SABC request, saying he wanted to guard against "emotional hype" and that any public interest in the trial stemmed only from the intense interest in the murder case against Oscar Pistorius. News photographers were not allowed to cover the trial while it was in session.
"He's not a celebrity in his own right," du Plessis said of Oscar's brother. Addressing Carl Pistorius, the magistrate then said: "Apologies to you, sir."
Carl Pistorius smiled and nodded.
Defense lawyer Kenneth Oldwadge said the legal team for Oscar Pistorius had been "overwhelmed by the media," and that similar press scrutiny would make it difficult to work in court during the older brother's case. Oldwadge cited a comment by the judge in Oscar Pistorius' bail hearing that the media treated the athlete like some kind of unusual "species" instead of a human being.
Prosecutors say Carl Pistorius was driving an SUV in March 2008 when he collided with a female motorcyclist. The woman, Marietjie Barnard, died in a hospital. Although the culpable homicide charge against Carl was initially dropped, it was reinstated this year because forensic evidence and reports from the accident scene became available, according to prosecutors.
The Pistorius family said last month that Carl deeply regretted the incident but insisted it was a "tragic accident." He was not under the influence of alcohol, the family said.
Oscar's legal team filed an appeal against some of his bail conditions on March 7, objecting to him being not allowed to travel outside of South Africa even though a magistrate said he was not a flight risk when granting him $108,000 bail. They're also challenging an alcohol ban and a ruling that Pistorius cannot speak with residents at the gated estate where he shot girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp dead in the early hours of Valentine's Day.
The athlete denies murdering Steenkamp and says he shot her by mistake, fearing an intruder was in his home. Prosecutors say he killed her intentionally following an argument.
Oscar Pistorius must appear in court again on June 4.


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Sporty Sightings
April 12, 2011
According to a tweet, @MsJubi spotted and snapped a pic of "super nice" Cody Ross of the Giants at Delfina (her "fav lunch spot").
Pat Burrell, the Giants leftfielder, dined at Ozumo San Francisco "with a lady friend" on Thursday night. He was reportedly low key, and was just drinking water since he was playing on Friday.
Over at Quince, Ichiro Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners came in to celebrate winning a game—he is reportedly a big fan of chef Michael Tusk's risotto.
Pau Gasol (center of the LA Lakers) had lunch at B44. As the tablehopper spotter reminded me, "He is Spanish, you know."


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I cannot begin to fathom the number of snapshots that have been produced between the first Kodak camera (circa 1888) and now. Let alone how anyone could begin paring it down into a collection.
And yet for years, Seattle-based businessman Robert E. Jackson has been sifting through discarded memories, searching for that certain something — nothing in particular — found in vintage, vernacular photography. He knows it when he sees it. And he now owns about 11,000 one-of-a-kind prints.
Jackson is most likely unknown except to those in the art world. But he must be onto something because in 2007 the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., devoted an entire show to his collection. He has also had a show this summer at New York City's reputable Pace/MacGill Gallery — and both institutions have shared some of his photos with us.
If the 2007 exhibit was a general introduction to the cultural significance of snapshot photography, the New York show is a bit more specific. Titled "Snap Noir," it exhibits, above all, Jackson's ability to curate and collect around a theme.
To quickly explain his method: He does most of his shopping on eBay — and the photos have often passed through many hands before reaching him. They're often first discovered at estate sales, then sold at flea markets, then purchased and curated by eBay vendors — who then sell to collectors like Jackson.
In the process, a bin of family photos gets whittled down to, say, a series of people blowing out birthday candles. Suddenly, a theme emerges. A story. (Albeit one often unintended by the photographer.)
"It's all about the mistakes," Jackson says, describing the things that catch his eye — like double exposures, lens flares or people in the air. The quirky. The curious. The intimate.
"I look for things that have an immediate dramatic impact," he says, "what the photography tells us about human psyche. I'm drawn sometimes to things that are a little darker. Now what that says about me I don't know."
Granted: There's a ghostly quality to old photos in general — not just Jackson's collection. I rummage through those flea market photo bins all the time and often wonder: What became of these people? Are they still here? How did they end up separated from their memories?
The Pace/MacGill exhibit seems more specifically to be a celebration of the odd. The photos leave me thinking a few things: People are really weird. And wonderful. And Jackson knows how to connect the dots. One man's mistake, it seems, can be another man's muse.
I could go on. And in fact, Jackson and I did on the phone. Our conversation lasted about an hour — but here's a condensed version for your eavesdropping amusement. One of the more interesting things we discussed: Is the snapshot dead?
We all know there's been an exponential spike in picture-taking this past decade. But there's probably also been an inverse spike in the existence of printed photos. And what will that mean for collectors like Jackson 50 years from now? What will it mean for museums and archives trying to make sense of who we were?
What is a snapshot today? Does it have value?
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


text: IJCAR 2008 - The 4th International Joint Conference on Automated Reasoning Sydney, Australia, 10th - 15th August, 2008 http://2008.IJCAR.org Call for Papers, and Workshop and Tutorial Proposals ---------------------------------------------------- IJCAR 2008 is the 4th International Joint Conference on Automated Reasoning, and is a merger of leading events: CADE (Conference on Automated Deduction), FroCoS (Workshop on Frontiers of Combining Systems), FTP (Workshop on First-order Theorem Proving) and TABLEAUX (Conference on Analytic Tableaux and Related Methods) IJCAR is the premier international joint conference on all aspects of automated reasoning, including foundations, implementations, and applications. The IJCAR technical program will consist of presentations of high-quality original research papers, system descriptions and invited talks. There will be two days of workshops and tutorials, 10th and 11th August, and the conference 12th to 15th August. Conference chair: Peter Baumgartner (NICTA) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Call for Papers --------------- IJCAR 2008 invites submissions related to all aspects of automated reasoning, including foundations, implementations, and applications. Original research papers and descriptions of working automated deduction systems are solicited. See the IJCAR website for a detailed list of logics, methods, and applications of interest. The proceedings of IJCAR 2008 will be published by Springer-Verlag in the LNAI/LNCS series. Submission details: Submission is electronic, through http://www.easychair.org/IJCAR2008/. Authors are strongly encouraged to use LaTeX and the Springer "llncs" format, which can be obtained from http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html. The page limit is 15 pages for full papers, and 5 pages for system descriptions. Program co-chairs: Alessandro Armando (Universit`a di Genova) Peter Baumgartner (NICTA) Gilles Dowek (l'Ecole Polytechnique) Important dates: Paper registration deadline: 22nd February 2008 Paper submission deadline: 3rd March 2008 Notification of paper decisions: 18th April 2008 Final version of papers due: 23rd May 2008 Conference dates: 12th-15th August 2008 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Call for Workshop and Tutorial Proposals ---------------------------------------- Workshop and tutorial proposals on IJCAR-related topics are solicited. Proposals that promise to bring new topics into IJCAR, of either practical or theoretical importance, or provide a forum for more detailed discussion on central topics of continuing importance are highly welcome. Proposals that close the gap between automated reasoning and related areas, e.g., formal methods or software engineering, are especially encouraged. Proposals must contain information sufficient for the programme committee to judge the importance, quality and community interest in the proposed topic. Each workshop or tutorial must have one or more designated organizers, and may have a programme committee as well. Proposals must be limited to three pages and provide at least the following information: + Title. + Description of the workshop topic and goals. (Why do you believe this is an interesting and significant topic?) + Intended audience. (From which areas do you expect potential participants to come? How many participants do you expect?); + Organization of the workshop. (Describe the intended format of the workshop, its expected duration (from half a day to two days) and preferred dates (August 10th, 11th, or both).) + Organizers' details. (Provide affiliations, backgrounds and contact details (email, etc.) of organizers and committee members) Proposals should be sent as plain text and as PDF to the workshop chair (michael.norrish at nicta.com.au). Workshop and tutorial chair: Michael Norrish (NICTA) Important dates: Deadline for proposal submissions: 17th December 2007 Acceptance/rejection notification: 14th January 2008 Deadline for camera-ready copy of workshop notes: 14th July 2008 Workshop Dates: 10th-11th August 2008 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------


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Image 1 of 1
Robin Erithacus rubecula L 13-14cm. Distinctive bird. Garden-dwellers are bold and inquisitive. Sexes are similar. Adult has orange-red face, throat and breast, bordered by blue-grey on sides but with sharp demarcation from white belly. Upperparts are buffish brown with faint buff wingbar. Juvenile has brown upperparts, marked with buff spots and teardrop-shaped streaks; pale buff underparts have darker spots and crescent-shaped markings. Voice Song is plaintive and melancholy. Alarm call is a sharp tic. Status Widespread resident, commonest in S. Observation tips Easiest to find in gardens and parks.
- Copyright
- © PAUL STERRY/Nature Photographers
- Image Size
- 3459x2370 / 6.3MB
- www.naturephotographers.co.uk
- Contained in galleries


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New Samsung tablets mimic Galaxy phones
Samsung is expanding its lineup of tablet computers and making them look more like its Galaxy smartphones, as it hopes to translate its success in phones to the tablet market, where Apple is dominant.
Samsung is expanding its lineup of tablet computers and making them look more like its Galaxy smartphones, as it hopes to translate its success in phones to the tablet market, where Apple is dominant.
Samsung Electronics Co., the second-largest maker of tablets after Apple, on Monday said it is putting three new tablets in the Galaxy Tab 3 series on sale in the U.S. on July 7. The cheapest, a $199 device, will have a screen that measures 7 inches diagonally. An 8-inch model will go for $299 and a 10-inch one for $399.
'Our goal is to attract Galaxy smartphone users, and to make it the ultimate smartphone accessory,' said Shoneel Kolhatkar, director of product planning at Samsung Mobile.
The 'Tab' line is Samsung's value brand, undercutting the price of similar Apple models. Samsung's premium tablets are in the 'Note' line, which include styluses. The 7-inch and 10-inch tablets had 'Tab 2' equivalents, but the 8-inch model is new, and coincides closely in size with Apple's iPad Mini, which came out late last year.
The new tablets have the same three buttons on the front as the Galaxy smartphones. Last year's Tab 2 had no physical buttons on the front, as encouraged by Google, which supplies the Android software.
The 7-inch Galaxy Tab 3 has 8 gigabytes of storage memory, while the larger models have 16 gigabytes. All of them have card slots for memory expansion.
Samsung and Apple are in a heated tussle when it comes to smartphones and tablets. Each company would like to dominate both markets. Samsung had 18 percent of the global tablet market in the first quarter this year, according to research firm IDC. Apple had 40 percent. In smartphones, the figures are reversed, with Samsung dominating, largely because of its Galaxy line. Apple came in second with a 17 percent market share for the iPhone. In the U.S., however, Samsung is outsold by Amazon.com Inc., with its Kindles.
Forrester Research analyst J.P. Gownder said a hit smartphone traditionally hasn't led buyers to get a tablet from the same manufacturer. He believes Samsung will get a bigger boost from its new mini-stores inside U.S. Best Buy locations. Having a retail environment it can control bridges some of the gap with Apple, which has its own stores.
'Whether you buy it online or in person, people want to touch and feel these products,' Gownder said.
Samsung has declined to challenge the iPad on screen resolution. The new tablets have the same resolution as older models, leaving them well behind the iPad and even Samsung's flagship Galaxy S4 smartphone. The 10-inch tablet has a resolution of 1280 by 800 pixels, compared with 1920 by 1080 for the phone. The smartphone packs in three times more detail in a square inch than the tablet does. (The 8-inch Tab 3 does, however, have a slightly higher screen resolution than the iPad Mini, the closest Apple equivalent.)
Analyst Jeff Orr at ABI Research said that the new Samsung tablets aren't 'groundbreaking in any particular direction,' it shows the South Korean company is honing a strategy that's been successful in smartphones: producing a wide variety of devices for different customer segments.
'Samsung has certainly shown how that can be accomplished with handsets, and I see more of that occurring now with the Galaxy Tab 3 announcement,' Orr said.
With the new models, Samsung will have five tablets on sale in the U.S., compared to two at Apple. In addition, Samsung sells the Galaxy Note II, a phone-tablet crossover device.
The 10-inch model is the first Android-powered Samsung tablet to use an Intel processor. That's a significant win for the Santa Clara, Calif., chipmaker, which has been trying to break into the market for cellphone and tablet chips now that PC sales are slumping. Other smartphones and tablets run chips made by a variety of companies, all based on designs from ARM Holdings PLC, a British company.
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This article is more than 1 year old
The Electric Car Conspiracy ... that never was
What a hit movie really tells us about innovation
It's almost two years since the debut of Chris Paine's documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? The movie has been a success in US theatres and often comprises one half of a double bill with Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. But what the success of the movie tells us is more alarming than any conspiracy it purports to unveil: a disdain for engineering, for technological innovation, and most of all a disdain for us, the consumers.
It's the story of General Motors' ill-fated EV1 electric car.
A hundred years ago, Who Killed? observes, General Motors bought up trolley car firms just to close this source of competition down. Today, it suggests, a covert alliance of Big Oil, Big Auto and corrupt regulators, both in California and in the federal government, has killed the electric car.
Vogueishly, Who Killed the Electric Car? makes transparent all the evil personalities connected around these three forces. In legal style, it finds them guilty of murdering General Motors' two-seater Electric Vehicle 1 (EV1). It shows the usual nauseating network of silver-haired execs, lobbyists and politicos, but gives some emphasis to George W Bush (a quack salesman for hydrogen cars) and Alan Lloyd, chairman of the California Air Resources Board (CARB), 1999-2004.
Hand made
The story starts in 1996, with GM putting EV1s 'all over California' - or at least that's the claim with which the film opens. In fact, GM made a total of just 800, which doesn't say much for the machine's real ubiquity. GM's Saturn division built four a day, by hand. Each cost $250-500 a month to rent, which is by no means exorbitant. Quite a few EV1s were lent to celebrities, including Mel Gibson, Ted Danson. Indeed, Tom Hanks told the David Letterman show that a single charge for a range of 70-80 miles a day was all he needed personally. Anyway, Hanks proclaimed somewhat tongue in cheek, "I'm saving America".
GM's EV1 electric car
But GM's heart wasn't in it, the movie explains. From its smoked glass HQ in Detroit, the company failed to promote the EV1. GM's ad campaign - shock, horror! - failed to feature good looking men and women. GM pointed up the car's limitations, and Gibson and Danson were asked to make deeply bureaucratic 'case statements' about it. Then oil firms campaigned against the state of California spending public money on roadside electrical charging stations. Soon, too, Mobil mobilised editorials hostile to the electric car in the pages of USA Today and Newsweek.
Some time after 1987, when GM chief Roger Smith first challenged his company's designers to come up with an electric vehicle, the California Air Resources Board became interested in the project. CARB had seen GM's first prototype of the EV1, the fatefully misnamed Impact. In 1990, CARB passed the Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate, requiring a rising percentage of California's cars to be free of emissions. Not too long after that, however, US car manufacturers negotiated a Master Memorandum of Agreement with CARB ensuring that the mandate require them to build the electric car only to the extent that there was consumer demand for it.


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Did the suppression or lack of voter ID laws aid President Obama's victory over Mitt Romney?
Obama did not win a single state that fully requires photo IDs to vote, although he was victorious in four states that accept non-photo identification – Washington, Colorado, Ohio and Virginia. Those states accept as legitimate identification current utility bills, bank statements and paychecks.
Obama won New Hampshire, which just enacted a new Voter ID law that eventually will require photo identification. That law is not being fully implemented until September 2013.
In Tuesday's election, New Hampshire voters who did not have photo identification were still allowed to vote after executing what the state calls a challenged voter affidavit, meaning the voter fills out a form and receives a letter requesting confirmation of voting. If there is no response within a month, the state may investigate to determine if vote fraud occurred.
Obama also won in Michigan. By law, every Michigan voter must either present picture identification at the polls or sign an affidavit attesting that he or she is not in possession of picture identification.
TRENDING: America's power system leaves people paying more for fewer options
In other words, in both New Hampshire and Michigan, voters do not need to present photo identification to cast a ballot.
Obama won several closely contested states that do not require any voter identification, including Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Wisconsin and Nevada.
The states that Obama lost that do require photo identification do not traditionally vote Republican. Tennessee, for example, voted Democrat in the 1972, 1992 and 1996 presidential elections. Georgia, which also requires photo ID, voted Democrat in the 1976, 1980 and 1992 presidential elections.
In Colorado, where non-photo identification is accepted, a review by RedState.com showed irregular voting patterns, finding that 10 counties had a total registration ranging between 104 to 140 percent of the respective populations.
When Media Trackers requested comment on the voter bloat in one area, Gilpin County, the county's chief deputy Gail Maxwell explained, "This is just a reminder Gilpin is a Gaming Community. The voters come and go!"
RedState notes records show some of the counties in question maintained statistically unusual voting figures. Gilpin County had a 61 percent voter turnout in the 2010 election, and Hinsdale County had an astounding 92 percent voter turnout. Those figures are far above the Colorado average turnout of 48 percent and the national average of 41 percent.
In Pennsylvania, where Obama was victorious, an Oct. 2 ruling by a Pennsylvania judge put a voter ID law on hold, decreeing that election officials can still ask voters for photo identification but cannot require it.
Voter ID laws were entirely struck down in Texas and South Carolina. Romney carried both states.
WND previously reported a radical group that has a history of biased research provided data utilized in both cases that blocked the new voter ID laws.
The Brennan Center for Justice, heavily funded by billionaire activist George Soros, has been at the center of providing data claiming voter ID laws will disenfranchise minorities.
However, WND reported the very voter ID data used by Brennan has been called into question by experts and has been contradicted by other credible studies and even by the group's own footnotes in the one study it conducted.
The three-judge panel in the landmark Texas case, for example, ruled that evidence showed the cost of obtaining a voter ID would fall most heavily on poor African-Americans and Hispanics in Texas and that such groups would face discrimination if the law were to be applied.
It was the second time voter ID laws were shot down in the U.S. In December, the Justice Department rejected the South Carolina voter ID law, also citing purported evidence minorities would be disenfranchised by the requirement to show photo identification to cast a ballot. It marked the first time that a voting law was refused clearance by Justice in nearly 20 years.
The Justice Department and attorneys representing the NAACP and ACLU were behind the lawsuit in South Carolina arguing against voter ID.
WND has found the Brennan Center's data played a central role in both the Texas and South Carolina cases.
In the case of Texas, Brennan provided the Department of Justice with its research claiming to show how minorities were affected by voter ID laws.
That information was apparently incorporated in a letter from the Justice Department to Texas election officials requesting more information about the potential impact that the new photo ID requirement might have on minority voters.
After the Texas election commission replied, the Justice Department issued a final letter denying pre-clearance of voter ID laws. The letter mimicked the information provided to Justice by the Brennan center.
Brennan played a similar role in providing Justice with information used in the South Carolina case, according to documentation reviewed by WND.
The documentation includes the letterto the Department of Justice from the ACLU, the Brennan Center and the League of Women Voters of South Carolina.
WND also reviewed the Justice Department's letters to the South Carolina attorney general's office eventually denying pre-clearance of the voter ID laws, finding key information from Brennan incorporated in the documentation.
Brennan further provided the ACLU and NAACP with its data to use in the South Carolina and Texas arguments.
Voter ID data biased?
The Brennan Center is located at New York University School of Law. Its primary focus is so-called voting rights and creating a "living constitution" as well as pushing for a "living wage."
In November 2006, the Brennan Center issued "Citizens Without Proof," an extensive report that claimed voter ID policies will disfranchise millions of minority, elderly and low-income voters because those voting blocs are less likely to possess documentation than the general population.
The report is routinely cited by news media and activists seeking to prove voter ID is racist.
Also, the National Center for Public Policy Research notes that in its report on voter ID measures, the NAACP "relied heavily" on Brennan Center's work.
In July, Politifact used the Brennan Center's 2006 report to support Attorney General Eric Holder's claim that 25 percent of African-Americans lack government-issued photo ID.
GroupSnoop.org, a website run by the National Center for Public Policy Research, recently posted a new profile of the Brennan Center that documents how its voter ID information is highly questionable and may be based on biased data.
In August 2011, Hans A. von Spakovsky and Alex Ingram of the Heritage Foundation critiqued the Brennan report, finding it is "both dubious in its methodology and results and suspect in its sweeping conclusions."
According to the Heritage Foundation report, the Brennan Center used biased questioning to obtain its desired result concerning minority voters – a result that is actually contradicted by footnotes buried in the Brennan report itself.
"By eschewing many of the traditional scientific methods of data collection and analysis, the authors of the Brennan Center study appear to have pursued results that advance a particular political agenda rather than the truth about voter identification," write Von Spakovsky and Ingram.
Heritage points out that the Brennan Center's report was based entirely on one survey of only 987 "voting age American citizens." However the report contained no information on how the survey determined whether a respondent was actually an American citizen.
Heritage found the Brennan survey used the responses of the 987 individuals to estimate the number of Americans without valid documentation based on the 2000 Census calculations of citizen voting-age population. Those Census figures, noted Heritage, "contain millions of U.S. residents who are ineligible to vote, thus contributing to the study's overestimation of voters without a government-issued identification."
Heritage charged the survey questions used in the Brennan Center's report "are also suspect and appear to be designed to bolster the report's biased findings."
Brennan, for example, did not ask respondents whether they had government-issued IDs, but instead asked whether respondents had "readily available identification."
"By asking whether such ID could be found 'quickly' or shown 'tomorrow,' the study seems to be trying to elicit a particular response: that those surveyed do not have ID," noted Heritage.
The Brennan study is undermined by some of its own footnotes.
One footnote states that the survey "did not yield statistically significant results for differential rates of possession of citizenship documents by race, age, or other identified demographic factors."
The footnote appears to contradict the very premise of the Brennan report.
Another footnote relates that 135 respondents "indicated that they had both a U.S. birth certificate and U.S. naturalization papers. This most likely indicates confusion on the part of the respondents." In other words, Heritage notes, nearly 14 percent of the respondents provided contradictory answers.
The Brennan study further did not ask any of its participants whether they had student or tribal ID cards even though in some states, such as Arizona and Georgia, such cards are acceptable for the purpose of voting.
Heritage cited numerous studies that directly contradict the Brennan report – studies not widely cited by the news media in the voter ID debate.
The studies include:
- An American University survey in Maryland, Indiana and Mississippi found that less than one-half of 1 percent of registered voters lacked a government-issued ID. Therefore, the study correctly concluded that "a photo ID as a requirement of voting does not appear to be a serious problem in any of the states."
- A 2006 survey of more than 36,000 voters found that only "23 people in the entire sample – less than one-tenth of one percent of reported voters" were unable to vote because of an ID requirement.
Besides receiving a reported $7.4 million from Soros' Open Society Institute since 2000, the Brennan Center was also the recipient of grants from the Joyce Foundation from 2000 to 2003. President Obama served on the Joyce board from 1994 through 2002.
History of shoddy research
Brennan has a history of questionable research.
The center was at the heart of a national scandal in 2002 after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance act. The attorneys defending McCain-Feingold had reportedly based key portions of their case on research provided by the Brennan Center – research, Discover the Networks notes, that may have been "deliberately faked," according to Weekly Standard Editor David Tell.
Tell quoted Brennan Center political scientist Jonathan Krasno admitting in his funding proposal to the Pew Charitable Trusts that the purpose of his group's proposed study on campaign finance was for partisan political reasons.
Wrote Tell: "'Issue Advocacy: Amassing the Case for Reform,' dated Feb. 19, 1999, explained that '[the purpose of our acquiring the data set is not simply to advance knowledge for its own sake, but to fuel a continuous multi-faceted campaign to propel campaign reform forward.' Dispassionate academic inquiry was so alien to the spirit of the thing that Brennan promised to suspend its work midstream, pre-publication, if the numbers turned out wrong. 'Whether we proceed to phase two will depend on the judgment of whether the data provide a sufficiently powerful boost to the reform movement.'"
Tell claimed Brennan researchers "deliberately faked" their results.
With additional research by Brenda J. Elliott